Mail Art News #85: Q & A with Juan Petry

 

Submission by participant David Bonet (see details below)

In October 2024, Juan Petry reached out to me by email suggesting a Zoom interview to discuss his mail art mega-project known as Social Dada, but after two years (2019-2021) of working from home with regular Zoom video calls, and finding that medium of exchange to induce too much self-consciousness and baggage, I suggested we use email instead. 

Immediately below, you will find a description of the Social Dada project from Juan's website, and then the interview for you to enjoy.  

-Thomas Brown, November 7, 2024     

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Project description from artsurprise.eu

Thomas Brown (TB): Why mail art?

 

Juan Petry (JP): I don't know what art is, so I don't know what mail art is either. It's a suitable term for sending something that some people think is art by post. I like the openness and commitment. In an area that isn't driven by short-term profit maximization, something new can be created and tried out. It's an incubator for contemporary art. Communication is an important pillar of social interaction. And mail art is an interesting form of it. It makes sense as an artist of social sculpture to use this pillar.

 

TB:  How and when did you get into mail art?

 

JP: Without knowing anything about the term mail art, I used the sending of art in my early graphic works 42 years ago. What interested me even then was the impact of the message on the recipient and the special feeling that could arise in the recipient.

Stamped cards mailed to participants around the world

TB: Please tell the readers more about the Social Dada project. Anything else that you would like to add besides what you have already written at: https://www.petry.eu/artworks/social-dada/ ?

What is the current status? What insights have you gained from managing such a large project? What excites you the most about this project so far?

 

JP: You can read all about the background of this project in the appropriate places. What I can try to do here is give a preliminary view from a distance.

Alongside the organization of the gallery in Spain, the artist residency and the other big project artsurprise.eu, this project has been the one that has taken up the most time for 3 years. 

I honestly didn't think how big it would become when I conceived and started it. More than 1000 creative people have already taken part and new ones are still joining.

The question is how the museum in New York will deal with it. But I'm quite relaxed about that. It will show how much the history of this museum influences the general art history of contemporary art. More and more museums that deal with contemporary art are showing interest. If this project is spread across these many, it will become part of art history, and to my delight, all those who took part will also become part of it.

It was and is also important to me to show that the creativity of the few selected artists in the museums is based on the huge foundation of creativity of the many in a society. This project, with all its works, is an appropriate representation.

Servia de les Garrigues, Social Dada event in Spain

The last 400 stamped cards, 2023

Social Dada stamps no. 1 – 6, used in 2022 and 2023

TB: If mail art is said to be a discipline that has freed itself from the art establishment, how do you explain the desire to document this interaction with the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York? I'm not saying mail art should forever remain removed from art museums, but historically, it has existed mostly apart from the art world establishment. 

 

JP: I can only ever align my actions with what I want to achieve. Rejection or rejection alone does not help me. If contemporary art seeks out and tries new paths, it can never be mainstream, and never established. And when it then finds these new paths and invites others, it becomes mainstream, that is the constant transition of contemporary art to modernity. In the mainstream, what has been tried before must succeed, in contemporary art, permanent failure is everyday life. But only there are prototypes. They remain unique milestones in a development. Where else are there 1000 artists who create 4000 works of art for a joint project?

 

TB:  I have visited your Artefact-We Act page and found it interesting from a civilizational perspective. One must come armed to participate in the vast global forum that is the internet.

Armed with the ability to communicate, use reason, and to filter out faulty logic, and defend against attacks. The ability to detect potential bots is also necessary thanks to AI. What more can you say on this topic of one's civic duties in the current Information Age?

 

JP: I think we have left the information age, we have long since arrived in the post-factual era. Or better yet, we have had the grace to be able to recognize this.

30 years ago, my students asked me what it would mean socio-politically if there was soon a computer in every household and people used it regularly.

My answer was: The probability of measuring truth disappears. People calculate the probability of truth based on the assumed distance between the sender and the source of the message. If all messages are only one pixel away, they become worthless for orientation. If at all, it is only worth looking at to find out who wants to send what. In this view, longer intervals are sufficient, because effectiveness and efficiency require repetition. 

AI is autistically bound to the database. Anyone in the political sphere who believes that AI is a solution will be surprised at what comes out of it when they can no longer control the training data. And the AI ​​is left with only the pixels, which is scorched earth as far as credibility is concerned.


TB:  What are your favorite pieces so far from the Social Dada project?

 

JP: My favorite part of this project is probably the most inconspicuous intervention that took place within the project. You have to look very closely to even notice the "editing". On the right side there is a small red spot. This is part of a fingerprint of a man who was over 90 years old when he expressed his desire to take part in this project in a library in a small village in Spain. He was sitting at a table with young people and said he could no longer draw, write and could hardly see. But if someone would guide his hand, he would leave his fingerprint. The finger would be the same one that his mother would have caressed during the Spanish Civil War, the one that she would have pressed to her heart as a sign of her everlasting love. [See header image at top of blog post -TB]

 

TB: What kinds of mail art have you been making outside of the Social Dada project? I imagine that it takes much of your free time. 

 

JP: I have designed and produced many works for mail art. You can read about some of them on my blog. I would like to take a closer look at this concept of free time. For me, mail art is not a leisure activity. It is part of my work. My work is social sculpture.

What is free time anyway? And if it is valued so highly in Western civilizations, why is there no growth? Here's a story: An Australian friend once told me that his family spoke very badly of him. He only worked 6 weeks a year at a university in England. He didn't work the rest of the year. His family thought he was a good-for-nothing and a lazy person, and that what he did the rest of the time was pointless. He would be irresponsible not to do something meaningful in that time. My reply had taken him aback. I congratulated him. His family had paid the greatest compliment possible for a person on this planet: he was a free person!

Only a person who does pointless things is free. He is free because he does not submit to the idea of ​​subjective meaningfulness when he acts.

And in this space of freedom there is room for enjoyment. Mail art is such a space for me, and therefore also a space for enjoyment.

 

TB: Here are some of my favorites from the Social Dada website.

Vera Petukhova, 2023

Vera Petukhova, 2023

Miley, 2023

Petra Rader, 2023